Humphrey v. Wilson

In Humphrey v. Wilson 282 Ga. 520 (652 SE2d 501) (2007), the Supreme Court upheld a habeas court's ruling that seventeen-year-old Genarlow Wilson's ten-year prison sentence for engaging in consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year-old girl constituted cruel and unusual punishment, where the statute under which Wilson had been convicted, OCGA 16-6-4, had later been amended by the legislature to make that conduct a misdemeanor. 33 Humphrey, supra at 527-528 (3) (c). The Supreme Court: "Recognized that recent legislative enactments constitute the most objective evidence of a society's evolving standards of decency and of how a society views a particular punishment" and found the punishments imposed before the recent legislative enactment to be cruel and unusual. Humphrey, supra at 530 (3) (c);